(I have to make a new post because I sometimes can't edit the old one ... see AJAX/whatever issue above)

Isn't it fascinating, in the time when it is most needed, accurate (or at least an important source) reporting of oil production and consumption, especially in the US itself, is wiped off the map?

Back to it...

Canada, oh Canada...

Shh... I think they have weapons of mass destruction...

Venezuela - Don't even bother

Brazil - They'll need it to make all them iPads

Short term, things are peachy. Funny how more oil production leads to more oil consumption

Is it just me or does that blue line drop below the red line at the end?

Ah Bahrain, I wish I could have a sex-on-the-beach while having sex on your beach.

Without getting beheaded*, that is. Not going to change, they're not worth invading anymore.

*Apologies for the racially offensive quip. It's only death by firing squad, and only if said beach tryst was rape...

Psychologist and women’s rights activist Fakhriya Dairi supports its use in rape. "Executing criminals could be cruel, but rapists destroying the future of their female victims is more cruel. Rape is a tragedy to all women, but it is worse here as female rape victims are blacklisted in Arab societies with no hope of getting married," said Dairi.

OK OK, Ms Dairi, oh, when will I learn No Means No. Can I at least where a Master Chief helmet, and customise the weapons each member of my firing squad uses? Kinda a Grand Theft Auto-Call Of Duty-Halo mashup.

Ah, Mexico, mui bien your oil is mui caliente. Oh, wait.

The new anti-immigration movement should drop pamphlets in Mexico saying,

"Don't bother coming to the US ... There's no oil here anyway."

A super fast bullet train from Mexico City to Canada would help Canadian oil production

and create US jobs. Oops, we need oil to build and run trains.

In Russia, Oil uses You. Hmm, not for too much longer, seems to have plateaued.

Oh, Norway, Norway, say it ain't so, pretty please...

Greece ... Well, it's all the bl**dy debt, nothing to do with oil, right?

Funny thing, that oil production thing seems to be lowest with

consumption highest. Nah, nothing to do with oil. Austerity is the solution! Heil IMF!

Spain - A nice tapas of low low oil production dishes and high high oil consumption platters

Nah, probably nothing to do with 1 in 2 young adults completely unemployed across the whole country.

(I know some of the spelling and grammar above is atrocious, I can't bloody edit the posts sometimes. Ah well, maybe I'll make an iPad iBooks2 from this)

To be honest, I'm feeling quite disturbed at the moment. I didn't expect my country-by-country research to be so poignant. It was all a lark, and then 10 countries in, I was like, f*** me this is no tin-foil-hat, Nostradamus-loving conspiracy theory.

A part of me wanted this whole "peak oil" thing to be some stupid tree-hugging lefty hippy liberal pot-smoking beat up. You know, like genetic modification, pesticides, global warming, the death of Blackberry, renewable energy, the debt crisis, and all that nonsense that's just fear-mongering that's threatening to take all the rights away from us honest, hardworking, heterosexual freedom-loving citizens of the world.

Weird thing about hindsight though...

This is bad. Real bad. Like when RIM announced the Playbook bad. You had that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, that it's going to be all downhill from here.

Present facts nvidia and you'll get booed off stage by this right wing crowd.

I looked through all the posts earlier on and it's great to see all these countries figures presented in one place.

Not at all, it just that this was sort of out of the blue spam fast that reeks a bit of "doth protest too much.". As for the "facts", yes many have been presented, but in a way hardly digestible and in a way that distracts from the most relevant question:

What is the trend and status of total worldwide oil production, known available* reserves and consumption?

The individual country statistics actually distract from this question. All that matters, in this case, is what the aggregates are for all countries.

*A final note about known available oil reserves: This has been mentioned many times to those who have held on to and predicted "peak oil" (Hint: this has happened so many times we've lost count)...the currently "known reserves" refers to reserves that are known to be available and accessible using current technologies and justifiable at current prices. It is certainly NOT all of the oil that is remaining in the world.

Not at all, it just that this was sort of out of the blue spam fast that reeks a bit of "doth protest too much.". As for the "facts", yes many have been presented, but in a way hardly digestible and in a way that distracts from the most relevant question:

What is the trend and status of total worldwide oil production, known available* reserves and consumption?

The individual country statistics actually distract from this question. All that matters, in this case, is what the aggregates are for all countries.

*A final note about known available oil reserves: This has been mentioned many times to those who have held on to and predicted "peak oil" (Hint: this has happened so many times we've lost count)...the currently "known reserves" refers to reserves that are known to be available and accessible using current technologies and justifiable at current prices. It is certainly NOT all of the oil that is remaining in the world.

Anyway...back to the Malthusian Fear-Mongering Festival.

Even in the simplest terms a poorer country has a higher chance of revolution, and when oil plays such a large role in some of these countries, it's nice to see where things are at in regards to their oil surplus, or lack of one. Western countries, who see opportunities in political change, are bound to exploit this. In the case of Europe, closely backed by the US, this change has profound implications for extending its influence.

"Islam is as dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog"~ Sir Winston Churchill. We are nurturing a nightmare that will haunt our children, and kill theirs.

Its refreshing around here to have a thread with some substance, as opposed to endless (often infantile) partisan playground bickering, involving the excess baggage about the relative merits, or lack thereof, of Obama vs. Romney, or Democrats vs. Republicans. Thanks, nvidia.

"We've never made the case, or argued the case that somehow Osama bin Laden was directly involved in 9/11. That evidence has never been forthcoming". VP Cheney, 3/29/2006. Interview by Tony Snow

Wow. Looks like someone got drunk last night and went on a peak oil bender. Not just spamming his own thread but hitting every other one with his peak oil preaching.

Nice.

A pleasure, as always. Funny how facts and figures and graphs are spamming, and not all the other threads and almost every post saying "Obama Sucks".

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammi jo

Its refreshing around here to have a thread with some substance, as opposed to endless (often infantile) partisan playground bickering, involving the excess baggage about the relative merits, or lack thereof, of Obama vs. Romney, or Democrats vs. Republicans. Thanks, nvidia.

Thank you, you're welcome. As I mentioned, I feel global warming and other issues pale in comparison to Peak Oil.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

Present facts nvidia and you'll get booed off stage by this right wing crowd.
I looked through all the posts earlier on and it's great to see all these countries figures presented in one place.
I think oil plays a large role in many things, but the geography of northern Africa and those countries wants of being more closely tied to Europe, I think is why we're seeing the Arab Spring.

Yup, facts are "spamming". Ah well, maybe I should have just posted a funny animated gif video loop so that it can be more palatable for the "audience".

Even in the simplest terms a poorer country has a higher chance of revolution, and when oil plays such a large role in some of these countries, it's nice to see where things are at in regards to their oil surplus, or lack of one. Western countries, who see opportunities in political change, are bound to exploit this. In the case of Europe, closely backed by the US, this change has profound implications for extending its influence.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MJ1970

Not at all, it just that this was sort of out of the blue spam fast that reeks a bit of "doth protest too much.". As for the "facts", yes many have been presented, but in a way hardly digestible and in a way that distracts from the most relevant question:

What is the trend and status of total worldwide oil production, known available* reserves and consumption?

The individual country statistics actually distract from this question. All that matters, in this case, is what the aggregates are for all countries.

*A final note about known available oil reserves: This has been mentioned many times to those who have held on to and predicted "peak oil" (Hint: this has happened so many times we've lost count)...the currently "known reserves" refers to reserves that are known to be available and accessible using current technologies and justifiable at current prices. It is certainly NOT all of the oil that is remaining in the world.

Anyway...back to the Malthusian Fear-Mongering Festival.

Indeed, it was an inspired moment. That's just how I roll. Why bother if you're not passionate about something.

And, I aim to please, for Google just isn't as fun as it used to be. To be fair, that was a good point, I wanted to look at individual countries, just as a lark.

What I found, was rather disturbing.

---------------MORE SPAM! YAY!--------------------------

Anyway, as for total oil:

Note the sections that say "total oil" in these graphs, lest I be accused of not providing total world figures.

The facts speak for themselves.

Myth 1: New oil is constantly discovered by high technology, advanced science and use of iPads.

Oil discovery is long, long gone. You need to discover oil, before you can extract it.

In the graph below, we can see that the best oil finds finished in 1980. That's thirty years ago.

So, if we're that fantastic, why haven't we found more oil?

Sure, maybe it's out there, and we just haven't got round to looking for it.

You would think though that with all that we know, and the massive size and resources of massive oil companies,

they would have spent the last 30 years, the grandest in all human history, actually looking for oil and finding oil.

Myth 2: There's still plenty of oil to go around, right now, it's all hunky-dory.

Never mind any "peak", this graph shows production has plateaued. Unlike global warming,

which relies heavily on future predictions, oil production is reasonably well recorded.

So either one believes the plateau is temporary, that somehow in the graph below we can

draw some sort of arithmetic progression straight line. But see Myth 1. Where is the oil going to come

from? Oh right, reserves. See Myth 3.

Myth 3a: There's plenty of oil reserves out there. We just need to pull it out of the ground.

Let's look at OPEC reserves over time. Not pretty. Thank goodness for Saudi and Venezuela.

However, see Myth 3b.

Myth 3b. There is a global oil inspector, Mr. Oil, who goes to all the countries and

looks and verifies oil production so the world can live safely.

Not the case. There is a history of overstatement and unaudited results.

At best, the growth of reserves is nowhere near the increase in production and consumption.

Myth 4. Oil production can go on for ever.

Well, this depends on whether you believe the projections or not.

If you can't see the other side of the mountain, or if the peak is covered by clouds,

it's natural to think you can keep climbing forever. All the ~current~

historical records, and projections from past years, have now been validated.

The peak is definitely in sight. Unless one believes that behind this peak is a

mountain with an even higher peak.

The part before 2007 is historical fact. The part that comes afterward is an ASPO extrapolation.

Myth 5. All those tree-hugging hippies have caused us to drastically reduce fossil fuel consumption,

so who cares if we are running out of oil.

China alone is gobbling up a massive amount of oil, and they don't look like stopping soon. Poor hippies.

Well, that's just China, the rest of the world has changed. Doesn't seem to be the case.

Addendum to "There's oil in places around the world we just haven't got of our butts to drill it" myth. (Can't edit old post, Safari shows white page of death)

Offshore Petroleum Reserve 5: Protected U.S. Coasts

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that new drilling wouldn't have an impact on the economy until 2030. After all, you can't just find a promising drill site and throw an oil rig on top of it overnight. Even after decades of production, experts warn that the economic impact might be minimal.

Offshore Petroleum Reserve 4: Brazilian Coasts

But to move up in the global oil market, Brazil first has to establish enough platforms in the region to permit full-scale production -- a project that will cost billions, especially given the depth and weight of the petroleum deposits.

Ownership of the Santos, Campos and Espirito Santo basins is a clear-cut issue. After all, the areas fall within the limits permitted by the U.N.'s Law of the Sea treaty. But what happens when potential oil fields pop up in more contested waters?

Offshore Petroleum Reserve 3: The Arctic

Who owns all these potential resources? Well, it's not as straightforward as you might think.

Under the 17th century Freedom of the Seasdoctrine, the Arctic belonged to no one, but under theUnited Nations' Law of the Sea treaty, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States all have a legal claim to valuable seafloor territory. The treaty gives countries exclusive economic rights to the 200 nautical miles extending from their coastlines. This lands large portions of the Arctic's petroleum riches firmly in U.S. and Russian hands.

However, the U.N. treaty also allows Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States to file claims for more territory if they can prove their continental shelves extended into the Arctic seabed. As a result, the five contenders for northern oil riches have all launched vigorous campaigns to survey the ocean floor. By this, they hope to convince the U.N. to give them as big a slice of the Arctic oil pie as possible.

Offshore Petroleum Reserve 2: Antarctica

The protocol, which went into effect in 1998, placed a moratorium on mining and drilling for petroleum for a minimum of 50 years. Even if mineral resources are accidentally uncovered through scientific research, no one can legally exploit them.But treaties aren't the only thing keeping drills out of tempting petroleum deposits. Sometimes, we just lack the technology.

Offshore Petroleum Reserve 1: Ultra-Deep Waters

Regardless of the challenges involved, these ultra-deepwater fields contain the kind of riches petroleum companies would love to claim. One particularly popular area is the Lower Tertiary in the Gulf of Mexico, where geologists have detected potentially lucrative drill sites at depths of 15,000 to 30,000 feet (4,572 to 9,144 meters). Chevron's Tahiti field in this region contains an estimated 400 to 500 million barrels of oil [source: USA Today]. The entire Lower Tertiary region may hold as much as 15 billion barrels total [source: Wired].

(So, all we need to be able to do is drill 5km to 10km... This is as DEEP as Mount Everest is HIGH. "Currently, deep-sea spar platforms can reach down through 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) and Transocean drill ships are capable of reaching depths of 12,000 feet (3,658 meters) [source: USA Today]"... So, we can only hit 4km right now. We have to double that to reach the real good stuff. Possible, maybe we'll have underwater cities too, like in Star Wars Episode 1 and Bioshock. Don't get me wrong, James Cameron was able to go ~himself~ to 11km DEEP. That's amazing. http://deepseachallenge.com/the-sub/sub-facts/ ...But large scale extraction of 50 million barrels per day of oil from ultra-deepwater, assuming the reserves are accurate, is probably quite another thing. At best, it will take 10-20 years for such ultra-deepwater mining to take place. See above as well. It says Chevron's Tahiti Field contains 400-500 million barrels of oil. that would be gone in 6 DAYS. The Lower Tertiary region has 15 billion barrels. Sweet. But, that would be gone in 6 MONTHS)

Dude...really? I know you're on this Peak Oil bender, but a few points:

1) "Proven" reserves have nothing to do with oil that is "reasonably obtained." That is simply not the definition. These are merely the reserves have been A) Discovered and B) Proven to exist in certain quantities

2) Proven reserves have a history of being MUCH larger than originally "proven." And proven reserves are NOT a sufficient basis to predict how much recoverable oil their actually is.

Quote:

“We are looking at more than four and a half trillion barrels of potentially recoverable oil. That number translates into 140 years of oil at current rates of consumption, or to put it anther way, the world has only consumed about 18 percent of its conventional oil potential. That fact alone should discredit the argument that peak oil is imminent and put our minds at ease concerning future petrol supplies.”

Dude...really? I know you're on this Peak Oil bender, but a few points:

1) "Proven" reserves have nothing to do with oil that is "reasonably obtained." That is simply not the definition. These are merely the reserves have been A) Discovered and B) Proven to exist in certain quantities

2) Proven reserves have a history of being MUCH larger than originally "proven." And proven reserves are NOT a sufficient basis to predict how much recoverable oil their actually is.

Note: Don't take my passion wrongly, I think I've found something I really believe in, and climate change, debt crisis, wars, people being assholes, useless failed companies, worthless tech ideas, obesity, diabetes, cholesterol, cancer, the world becoming slaves to China... can actually all be traced to one thing, the Energy Crisis.

In response to the above...

LOL and people are "skeptical" about global warming. :D

So oil is neither a fossil fuel nor a finite resource?

Wonderful, because we need a few trillion barrels more in the next 10 years.

Funny how nobody has found all this extra oil.

I was giving the benefit of the doubt to "proven reserves".

In truth it is clear, even by your own statement, this is a fairytale number,

like 3G speeds "up to 20mbit/sec".

You say the actual amount found is more, but I would ask for a chart to prove this. You can see above the graph that clearly shows discovery has dropped significantly. So, either all that's discovered has not yet been extracted, or there's a lot there's not been discovered yet.

Saudi Aramco... Why, I'm blinded by their truth. The most responsible and ethical company on the planet in the most democratic, free and open country on the planet. Hmm, not.

If there is all this oil, why has global production plateaued?

If all this oil is abundant and out there? Why has no single significant production of unconventional oil started in the past 5 years? Canadian tar sands not counted, they've been doing it for a few decades now.

The argument for more oil than we currently really know about is built upon more and more assumptions, "predictions" and hypotheses, that has no link with ~current global production~. At some stage, you might as well say, yeah, well, we can colonise Europa by 2050, since there's plenty of water there, we'll never run out of water on Earth.

It's building to the point of blind hope. "Yeah, it may be out there, it may be easily obtained, it may be super abundant"... Maybe, maybe, maybe. Our cars don't run on Maybe.

The gas tank is empty, and everyone is scrambling to find the nearest petrol station. Just like in real life, sure, the petrol station with tons of gasoline might be just around the corner, or it might be 20 miles away. But either way, your gas tank is showing E. Sure, there may be oil out there that will last 2000 years, but in the past 10 years, nothing has materialised.

Vapourware. Literally. Gas fumes, nothing else. And the world is now running on fumes.

Ironically, the Australian Prime Minister has staked her career, party and government on introducing carbon pricing locally starting next month. If she had just told the country, look, the world is screwed, there's no more oil, she'd be in a much better position.

What I'm curious about, and please critique, is the logical arguments regarding oil.

See, in global warming, there are two inductive leaps that need to be made.

One, that we are causing increase in global temperatures.

Two, that these global temperature increase of just 2degC is bad, real bad.

In the energy crisis, the two inductive leaps that need to be made are:

One, that of the resource/ reserve/ proven reserve/ what Saudi says it has is ~in reality~ equal to or more than what is claimed to be there.

Two, that not only do existing resource/ reserves/ etc. numbers have to pan out ~in actual production~, but there are still vast resources as cheap and energy-dense as oil.

Yes, some "proven reserves" may turn out to be more, some may be less. The discovery graph way above does show that even discovery, which leads to estimates of proven/ resource/ reserve/ whatever, has markedly dropped away many decades ago.

Even if people were faking discovery, they haven't been faking it much at all. So why the discrepancy between discovery and reserve estimates? If reserves are continually increasing, due to ostensibly, continuing new discoveries, then the discovery graph should reflect this. So either the discovery reporting is false, or the reserve reporting is dubious. Only if both the record of discovery and the record of reserve statements match, then we could say either is correct, or either is false. But at this stage, one of the two is false or true, but not both false nor both true.

To be honest, what I've uncovered here in this thread alone is clearly very, very significant.

Luckily at this stage all this peak oil information is out there in the open. Lest I be "Assanged". Also the documentaries are out there on iTunes Store, I've found it very enlightening. Just watching five documentaries on iTunes Store, and it's clear for the past 10 years most of what we've known is well, limited.

Yes, of course for some of us on the "left" for decades we've known, save the forest, save the trees, use bikes, cars are bad, rich people are evil, electricity is going to cause a hurricane to kill innocent African children.

Putting aside any moral argument, the facts stand for themselves. Either the energy is there, or it isn't. It's like downloading a new 3D game on your Mac. Either it's going to run, or it's going to crash, depending on the game and the hardware. We can ~hope~ the game is compatible, we can ~hope~ the Mac has enough specs to run it, but of course if we looked at the facts then we can know if it's going to run.

In the case of energy, we ~know~ what's there, and what ~may be there~ is ~hope~. Not that ~hope~ is bad, but, let's understand that it is ~hope~.

I think people just haven't "got" how critical the situation is.

For me, the penny dropped when I went through individual Middle East countries and looked at their situation and US/UK/Nato action with regard to their oil. When you see it, it is so blindingly obvious how important oil is in US/UK/Nato policy and "intervention", that any other reason given is ridiculous. Just look at Egypt, Syria, Saudi, Iran, Iraq and Libya. Given that all those regimes are all screwed up beyond recognition, cherry-picking who to help and who not to help seems confusing, but if you look at their oil situation, as I've outlined above, it is really quite simple.

Saudi has the most oil, so they are the West's best friends.

Iraq has a lot of oil, the rest is history anyway.

Iran has a lot of oil, next target.

Egypt, no more oil, who cares about them.

Syria, see above.

Libya ~ nice one, good opportunity to get rid of a dictator that became inconvenient.

Interestingly, no one questioned me on Afghanistan. I knew something was up with Afghanistan and oil.

Could it be ... an oil pipeline? I mean, the region is so messed up EIA has ZERO information.

So let's take a hawkish view. Yes, Taliban are evil, US went in to fight against them and extract justice.

Now, we are helping Afghanistan by building gas pipeline. Everyone wins.

However... from link above:

A major factor deciding the fate of the project would be the political stability. Since the birth of independent Central Asian states, the region has witnessed huge political instability and religious and ethnic conflicts... Even today, despite the functioning democratic regime of Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow in Turkmenistan, the political situation remains fragile. Other determining factors include the agreement on transit fee and security mechanisms. Since the pipeline passes through the restive Afghan areas of Herat and Kandahar and Balochistan in Pakistan, it becomes imperative to have a well-defined legal institutional mechanism in place.

The beauty of this whole thing is, why the heck would anyone want to build a big ass 1000-mile-long pipeline through the most messed up region on Earth?

Might it be because there's wonderful energy everywhere we look and this is a charity project for Afghanistan?

Or is it, by occam's razor, because we are getting more desperate to secure energy supplies?

"At the time, the Taliban controlled 90 percent of Afghanistan but not the area held by the Afghan Northern Alliance. Unocal testified to Congress that the pipeline "cannot begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan government is in place. For the project to advance, it must have international financing, government-to-government agreements and government-to-consortium agreements." The Bush Administration urged the Taliban regime to form a government of national unity that would include the northern tribes. Bridas took a different approach—they negotiated separately with different tribes. The president of Bridas spent eight months visiting tribes along the pipeline route and reportedly had secured their cooperation for the venture.

Negotiations with the Taliban broke down in July 2001, just before the attacks of September 11. In October, the US ousted the Taliban, with the assistance of the Northern Alliance. The Pashtun—roughly 40 percent of the population—are a major source of Taliban insurgents, and the pipeline route goes through the Pashtun area in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are about 30 million Pashtuns on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. It’s an artificial border—the so-called Durand Line that was imposed by British India in 1893. It was drawn intentionally to break up the Pashtun tribes. In fact, Pashtuns in Kandahar were independent from Kabul for ages, and, until recently, Pashtuns in Pakistan were relatively independent from Islamabad.

After the 2001 invasion, planning of the pipeline continued. Interim President Karzai met with President Musharraf in Islamabad in February 2002, where they announced their agreement to cooperate on the proposed pipeline. In May 2002, the heads of state of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to cooperate on the project, and a steering committee of oil and gas ministers was established to oversee project development. In July 2002, the steering committee requested the ADB to finance project-related studies through the provision of"regional technical assistance. In subsequent years, steering committee meetings were held at frequent intervals. India participated in the tenth meeting in 2008, and the four countries signed the Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement.

Note: Don't take my passion wrongly, I think I've found something I really believe in, and climate change, debt crisis, wars, people being assholes, useless failed companies, worthless tech ideas, obesity, diabetes, cholesterol, cancer, the world becoming slaves to China... can actually all be traced to one thing, the Energy Crisis.

In response to the above...

LOL and people are "skeptical" about global warming. :D

So oil is neither a fossil fuel nor a finite resource?

Wonderful, because we need a few trillion barrels more in the next 10 years.

Funny how nobody has found all this extra oil.

I was giving the benefit of the doubt to "proven reserves".

In truth it is clear, even by your own statement, this is a fairytale number,

like 3G speeds "up to 20mbit/sec".

You say the actual amount found is more, but I would ask for a chart to prove this. You can see above the graph that clearly shows discovery has dropped significantly. So, either all that's discovered has not yet been extracted, or there's a lot there's not been discovered yet.

Saudi Aramco... Why, I'm blinded by their truth. The most responsible and ethical company on the planet in the most democratic, free and open country on the planet. Hmm, not.

If there is all this oil, why has global production plateaued?

If all this oil is abundant and out there? Why has no single significant production of unconventional oil started in the past 5 years? Canadian tar sands not counted, they've been doing it for a few decades now.

The argument for more oil than we currently really know about is built upon more and more assumptions, "predictions" and hypotheses, that has no link with ~current global production~. At some stage, you might as well say, yeah, well, we can colonise Europa by 2050, since there's plenty of water there, we'll never run out of water on Earth.

It's building to the point of blind hope. "Yeah, it may be out there, it may be easily obtained, it may be super abundant"... Maybe, maybe, maybe. Our cars don't run on Maybe.

The gas tank is empty, and everyone is scrambling to find the nearest petrol station. Just like in real life, sure, the petrol station with tons of gasoline might be just around the corner, or it might be 20 miles away. But either way, your gas tank is showing E. Sure, there may be oil out there that will last 2000 years, but in the past 10 years, nothing has materialised.

Vapourware. Literally. Gas fumes, nothing else. And the world is now running on fumes.

Ironically, the Australian Prime Minister has staked her career, party and government on introducing carbon pricing locally starting next month. If she had just told the country, look, the world is screwed, there's no more oil, she'd be in a much better position.

I'm not going to do your homework for you. Proven reserves have a history of being much larger than originally thought. Go look it up. And no, we're not anywhere near ready to run out of oil. But don't let that stop you from going on your Peak Oil bender.

I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow doesn't look good either.

I'm not going to do your homework for you. Proven reserves have a history of being much larger than originally thought. Go look it up. And no, we're not anywhere near ready to run out of oil. But don't let that stop you from going on your Peak Oil bender.

Nice. Zero attempt to refute my points. You can stick your head in the sand. But there's no oil there.

Something foul in the state of "Denmark". It's amazing to see some of y'all thrash global warming to no end.

But when the facts of peak oil are presented... Crickets.

Don't take this personally, clearly this is a major issue that very few people are willing to face.

And they say global warming is ideology. Anti-peak-oil is certainly ideology by all reasonable measures.

I have presented tons of evidence. The only point argued is that "proven reserves have a history of being much larger than originally thought".

So of all the points I have made, there is only one point presented, of which a search shows no evidence for such a thing.

This is faith and ideology. Funnily, the same thing that has driven ~our~ oil bender, not "my" "bender".

It's clear now our situation and pure denial the world is in.

That we now rely on fantasy about there being more oil than we think, and that it's easier to extract when we think.

My case is clear, I aim to make this the last post.

I will end on another 2 graphs. If people do not want to analyse the facts and science, and instead use ideology, while trying to claim global warming is ideology, then that is the choice sentient beings are allowed to make. I shall now attempt to channel my efforts elsewhere, since if the brightest minds of this forum cannot offer any reasonable argument to my evidence presented, then clearly I have hit the peak (pun intended) of intellectual discourse available on this forum.

But I understand, this is all a scary, scary proposition for many people to grasp. Just like when we learn Santa Claus doesn't exist, shock grips us. It makes us question everything we know. I empathise with this. It's just like when we discovered quantum mechanics, or when we realised, hey, maybe God doesn't intervene in everything, some of it is purely... man-made.

So it appears Peak Oil has two fronts. The first is the facts, which people will resist, some to their dying day. The second front is simply the shock. The shock that we aren't going to be able to continue like we have. This is the shock gripping much of America and Europe just with the debt crisis and the destruction of the middle class. People cannot accept, understandably, that things are worse off economically than their parents' time, despite massive, massive advances in so many aspects of human life.

I believe Apple's new "spaceship hq" is to be partly powered by Natural Gas.

Why, thank you for your enquiry. Yes. Natural Gas is very, very important for several reasons. It produces less emissions, it is more energy-efficient (transport, cooking, water heating, home heating directly from natural gas, as well as bloom boxes).

Now, there is talk of Peak Gas. But in any case, oil as we know it is going to be less and less cheap and easily available. Natural Gas is an important stopgap, and may only have 5 to 20 years before it too becomes hard to extract.

Not also that natural gas is much more difficult to transport since it is not liquid at ordinary temperatures.

There is a reason why Apple HQ/Datacenter etc is going natural gas + solar and maybe a lot of wind too. Could it be Apple doesn't want to contribute to the nightmare that is peak oil?

I think oil plays a large role in many things, but the geography of northern Africa and those countries wants of being more closely tied to Europe, I think is why we're seeing the Arab Spring.

Not at all, the reason for the Arab spring is four-fold:

1. Demographics: Lots of young people, but not so many jobs.

2. Education: Lots of educated young people, that can actually read, write and calculate.

3. Technology/information/communication: New forms of media through the use of internet and all it offers allowed the youth to form new communities in the internet, sharing uncencosered information. And last but not least:

4. The US made a change in its foreign-policy after 9/11. The US gradually stopped supporting dictatorships and started a program to help grassroot-movements in the arab world to flourish and organize a plan for regime-change. In former times when revolutions were happening in the arab world, the US would support the dictatorships to put them out, and the international media would put a blind-eye to all that.. not anymore. The only exception the US made is Saudi-Arabia, because of the huge oil-exports by Saudi-Arabia the dictatorship has still the full support of the US, same goes for some other oil-exporting gulf-states.

These four points combined made the arab spring possible, not Europe.

I disagree, and could prove you're wrong; care to offer any proof that you're not wrong?

A report by the oil executive Leonardo Maugeri, published by Harvard University, provides compelling evidence that a new oil boom has begun. The constraints on oil supply over the past 10 years appear to have had more to do with money than geology. The low prices before 2003 had discouraged investors from developing difficult fields. The high prices of the past few years have changed that.

Maugeri's analysis of projects in 23 countries suggests that global oil supplies are likely to rise by a net 17m barrels per day (to 110m) by 2020. This, he says, is "the largest potential addition to the world's oil supply capacity since the 1980s". The investments required to make this boom happen depend on a long-term price of $70 a barrel – the current cost of Brent crude is $95. Money is now flooding into new oil: a trillion dollars has been spent in the past two years; a record $600bn is lined up for 2012.

The country in which production is likely to rise most is Iraq, into which multinational companies are now sinking their money, and their claws. But the bigger surprise is that the other great boom is likely to happen in the US. Hubbert's peak, the famous bell-shaped graph depicting the rise and fall of American oil, is set to become Hubbert's Rollercoaster.

Investment there will concentrate on unconventional oil, especially shale oil (which, confusingly, is not the same as oil shale). Shale oil is high-quality crude trapped in rocks through which it doesn't flow naturally.

There are, we now know, monstrous deposits in the United States: one estimate suggests that the Bakken shales in North Dakota contain almost as much oil as Saudi Arabia (though less of it is extractable). And this is one of 20 such formations in the US. Extracting shale oil requires horizontal drilling and fracking: a combination of high prices and technological refinements has made them economically viable. Already production in North Dakota has risen from 100,000 barrels a day in 2005 to 550,000 in January.

So this is where we are. The automatic correction – resource depletion destroying the machine that was driving it – that many environmentalists foresaw is not going to happen. The problem we face is not that there is too little oil, but that there is too much.

I don't think that there's any evidence of any Arab spring, and that is just a propaganda meme that has been pushed by mostly liberal media. Arab winter would be more accurate.

I also don't believe that democracy is something that all nations are capable of having, because some are not presently evolved enough, and in certain cases, a dictator would be preferable to the people's choice.

Spring is intended to mean a good thing, a blossoming of flowers, nice weather approaching, happy times, some sort of renaissance, and I believe that the exact opposite is more likely to happen, and I also believe that current news, events and happenings support this.

Spring is intended to mean a good thing, a blossoming of flowers, nice weather approaching, happy times, some sort of renaissance, and I believe that the exact opposite is more likely to happen, and I also believe that current news, events and happenings support this.

Indeed, spring means a blossoming, an improvement, more life... compared to the winter. In the case of the arab world, the winter means the five-six decades of US-supported dictatorships that used oppression, torture.. to keep its populations under control while the dictators and their family and a few lackeys were happy to collect and keep unbelievable amounts of richdoms while they deliberately created a society where corruption is abundant and development got suffocated so that their power and control might not be doubted or challenged. The US and the western world meanwhile enjoyed the stable deliverement of cheap ressources, the obedience in question of foreign policy as well as the availability of markets for western products.

Getting rid of that would indeed be a spring as the people would organize themselves in a democratic society, even if it is islamic based, and would therefore better decide what is in their collective interest and become free of the oppressive system of the dictatorships.

The problem is only that the old structures of the dictatorships are deeply entrenched within the police- and military-forces as well as in the economy and currently only the heads of the dictatorships got ripped off, and so the spring is threatened by the old powers that want to keep the old dictatorships alive.

It's still open who will win in the end but it's undeniable that a spring started, threatened as it may be, and maybe it will turn into summer, if it can defeat all the entrenched supporters and profiteurs of the old regimes.

I disagree, and could prove you're wrong; care to offer any proof that you're not wrong?

Very dubious. I don't have time. But certainly the US will very likely never see a return to its domestic oil-producing capacity. And of all the talk of "a new oil boom", nothing has seriously materialised. It is still based on a chaining together of unlikely scenarios to pull off the oil boom.

Very dubious. I don't have time. But certainly the US will very likely never see a return to its domestic oil-producing capacity. And of all the talk of "a new oil boom", nothing has seriously materialised. It is still based on a chaining together of unlikely scenarios to pull off the oil boom.

Dubious? The article cites facts. Past predictions were wrong...very wrong. This is no surprise, as they've always been wrong. We always end up with far more oil than initially "proven." It doesn't mean we can just use oil in perpetuity. But it does mean we have many years to eventually transition away from fossil fuels. Now, if the Left would just let us develop our natural gas and domestic sources in the interim while supporting nuclear power, we might be on to something.

I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow doesn't look good either.

People with half a brain. While I'm not a supporter of the peak oil theory ( as I think we do have awhile yet ) that doesn't mean forever and the things we'd have to do to get at it ( ruining the enviroment in the process ) would make it a reason to look to alternatives.

And please don't try to tell me nothing would happen there's lots of examples of what could go wrong :